Tuesday, January 12, 2016

It's Tuesday night at Casa de Sambuca. Scream King is working very late, so much of my evening was spent cooking naan pizzas and watching Power Rangers Jungle Fury. My son loves Power Rangers in all its iterations, and every time you think you've seen them all, a different one pops up on your Netflix suggestions and you wonder what your life has come to.

Anyway, I've had The Green Inferno on my radar for a while, because come on, Eli Roth, man. Inspired by movies like Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox, Green Inferno follows a group of college protestors into the Amazon, where they are fighting to protect the rainforests. Upon arrival in Peru, the group, who assumed they'd just be hugging trees and taking some cell phone videos, see that they are in for a much more dangerous mission. Justine (Lorena Izzo) is the daughter of a lawyer for United Nations, and quickly realizes that she may have been brought along for protection, due to her political affiliations. After a run-in with the local militia, they believe they've made it out safely. But small planes loaded with twenty-somethings and booze aren't always to be trusted, and as we may have expected, there be cannibals lurking in this here jungle.

Now there are no longer actually any cannibalistic tribes left in the Amazon, but regular old tribes wouldn't make for a very exciting movie, now would they? Things happen as you would expect. People get locked up in makeshift cages, people get killed, people get eaten for lunch, etc. There is also this whole female genital mutilation storyline woven in, which is one of the more terrifying parts of the movie. Additionally, they find out that Alejandro is not what he seems, and his motive is not really saving the rainforests anyway! So he's probably the only one in this group that deserves to be eaten by cannibals.

Apparently Eli Roth used all real Amazonian tribe people in the movie as actors, and some even worked on the crew. As for the other actors, he wouldn't even let them audition until they agreed to work in extreme conditions -- brutal heat, no bathrooms and tons of creepy crawlies.

I'm not sure what I was really expecting, but I liked this movie. Sure, cannibals in the jungle isn't really breaking new ground in the horror genre, but the authenticity behind it really added to a pretty good storyline, some action and good old people-eating. Although it's no classic like Hostel, Eli Roth fans should check this one out.